Mar 6 1964
From The Space Library
"Boosted Areas" sounding rocket was launched from NASA Wallops Station to 59.5-mi. altitude with sodium-lithium payload designed and built by Sweden's Uppsala Ionospheric Observatory on contract to Swedish Space Committee. The wide and reddish sodium-lithium cloud ejected in the atmosphere was visible for many miles and was photographed from several locations. The test was in preparation for series of such launchings in the auroral zone in northern Scandinavia later this year, to study causes of aurora and airglow. This first launch of Boosted Areas from Wallops was quite successful. Small booster included in the Areas increased its altitude from normal 225,000 ft. to 314,000 ft. (Wallops Release 64-24)
Nike-Cajun sounding rocket was launched from NASA Wallops Station to 71-mi. altitude with payload of 12 explosive charges to provide data on atmospheric winds and temperatures and effects of the "warming trend" in the upper atmosphere. Previous measurements had been made during February "warming trend," which moved in westerly direction across the northern hemisphere. This second and unexpected warming trend appeared to be moving in easterly direction. (Wallops Release 64 25; NASA Rpt. SRL)
NASA Administrator James E. Webb, speaking at Chamber of Commerce dinner in Oxford, N.C., clarified the cost of a U.S. manned lunar landing in this decade: "This $20 billion outlay for manned space flight for the period 1961 through 1970 is for Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.. . "Of the $20 billion marked for manned space flight in the present decade, $18 billion will be expended for the launch vehicles and spacecraft, the ground facilities, the astronaut training, and the management skills and other human factors that are an integral part of our nation's capital investment. These are all things we must have-in any event-to achieve the across-the-board competence in every major area of manned space flight that security, well-being, and progress of the nation may demand. "The portion of this total effort devoted to landing on the moon will cost only about $2 billion-that is, sending three Americans on a round-trip voyage of lunar exploration, along with everything in the way of spacecraft and special equipment that the expedition will require. . . . "I hope that this brief and somewhat simplified explanation will put the correct price tag on the extra cost of the lunar mission. Let us all endeavor to put the emphasis where it really belongs: on the rapid growth of American competence in all areas of manned space flight particularly in the area near earth Which is the prime importance for national security." (Text)
Before Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, NASA Assistant Administrator for Technology Utilization and Policy Planning Dr. George L. Simpson, Jr., said that, on the basis of the Aerospace Research Application Center (ARAC) pilot program, NASA "judged the first year of the Indiana University experimental program promising enough to Warrant support for a second year." ARAC receives all NASA reports, sends pertinent abstracts to subscribing companies based on their "interest profiles." This "model of a regional technology transfer program" was being observed by other organizations in other regions. Another such program was underway at Wayne State Univ. and two others were beginning. (Testimony)
March 6-7: NASA astronauts made trip to the bottom of Grand Canyon and back up, in field exercise to train the astronauts as "competent observers" of rock and mineral formations. Geologists from NASA Manned Spacecraft Center and U.S. Geological Survey served as field instructors. (UPI, Houston Press, 3/7/64)
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